File photo. Photo: 123RF
A dronemaker says civilian and military aerospace sectors benefit each other and that is a good thing.
Protesters chained themselves outside the national aerospace conference in Christchurch on Wednesday and several were carried away by police.
They called for an end to all rocket launches and development of high-tech weapons in New Zealand, claiming militaries were using "aerospace" to make wartime technologies more palatable.
The government unveiled space and drones as its top two priorities in the new defence industry strategy on Friday.
"Defence and space overlap more now than ever before. Having a strong space sector goes hand in hand with having a strong Defence Force," the government stated.
Dr Isaac Henderson - who chairs the drone industry national body, UAVNZ - said civilian and military collaborated usefully, citing universal use of GPS, a military technology.
"It's a rather narrow world view," he said of the protest.
UAVNZ had a Defence Force liaison officer on it "to align civilian and military best practice", said Henderson, who makes drones for light shows and had been at the two-day conference.
"The drone doesn't know if it's being flown for military or civilian purposes, but what good practice and professional operations look like is the same in both contexts."
There would be some companies going into the defence arena - rising geopolitical stresses demanded it, he said - "but, you know, that's not all of aerospace".
"Some companies are probably already working on things which defence which might need, and defence spending might now drive companies to try to align with what they need."
But in reality, a lot of what NZDF needed would need to come from offshore, given and supply chain issues, he said.
Canada launched a defence industrial strategy just before New Zealand's last Friday, with both emphasising being "faster, smarter
Defence and space minister Judith Collins announced the strategy, saying, "Everybody wants to be the smartest, the fastest" and she wanted the world coming to this country for its smart military technology.
Defence testing grounds and its ideas of what it wanted would be opened up more to companies, she said.
Samuel Vye, head of Syos, a dronemaker with over $60 million in UK contracts, including for the Ukraine war, told the strategy launch that industry anticipated working more closely with the NZDF.
The strategy was "huge", Vye said.
Collins was at the aerospace conference today.
"In terms of a national space mission, our first objective is to develop our sovereign space capabilities, and I expect I will have more to say about this by the end of the year," she said in a statement.
"By the end of this year, we will have put in place a regulatory sandbox where tests can be carried out freely and safely."
The US is also stressing speed, but in another way.
In April, US President Donald Trump embarked on "ensuring a rapid and transparent foreign defence sales system" that "delivers cost efficiencies for the United States and trusted ... allies and partners".
One of part of NZ's new strategy is to do more to work with suppliers to get US third-party export control approvals.
"The United States Foreign Military Sales Program (FMS) will continue to be an important source of military equipment and sustainment," it said.
Sustainment was the third of the top three priorities that Collins announced on Friday. This required improving the strained global supply chains, a constraining factor, according to Henderson.
The new strategy addressed the supply chain, in part, by stressing the importance of the US-established Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience or PIPIR. One of its first projects was to set up shared regional standards for drones.
In addition to the industry strategy, the government has a new aviation sector strategy and a year-old space strategy. But they do not always line up: The space strategy, for instance, barely mentions defence.
The industry strategy talks about "delivering cutting edge technology directly into the hands of the war fighter", and backs up the $12 billion defence capability plan that has a goal of acquiring more lethal weapons.
Three defence commentators RNZ spoke to were sceptical, saying the strategy was too vague - "36 pages of waffle," one called it.
"Where are the carveouts for small, agile firms?" they asked.
The only one of the three who would be named, Mark Obren, said the contrast was with Australia.
"You only need to look at Australia's 'Sovereign Defence Industrial Priorities' and it is rapidly apparent that Australia is trying to resolve the bigger issues of building capabilities, while I would characterise New Zealand's position as relying on three silver bullets leveraging off others' capabilities," Obren said.
A third said the biggest issue was how to get local industry with the massive multinationals the government used for big buys.
NZ had never mandated this but was still "only asking nicely".
The strategy talks about more NZ businesses basically running an entire big defence contract for, say, Lockheed Martin. But the second analyst said this might only add to the costs and time.
The two local priorities of space and drones line up internationally, where the "primes" or huge contractors, are pivoting now to compete alongside a slew of new-generation tech-defence companies, many of them American or European.
In June, Trump put out another executive order titled "Unleashing American drone dominance".
The UK just did deals to pour millions in maritime drone making in Plymouth and with tech-defence firm Palantir to establish Britain as "a hub for defence technology innovation across Europe".
Japan is working on a technology safeguards agreement with the US, like NZ has, to share space technology including for missile tracking.
Henderson said some local aerospace companies, like his, were in fields where they got by, but others needed outside injections. Companies from the EU, US and Australia were at the conference.
"Those require huge amounts of capital and so you will find there is some international investment."
One company with a speaker at the conference, California-based Wisk Aero that does testing in New Zealand, was taken over by Boeing in 2023.
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